Continuing our Saturday series, News from a Niche today’s topic is obtaining Totally free points from non-travel programs with Mike at Freepointsite.com. Take it away Mike …

I’ve always been somewhat of a collector. When I was younger, it was baseball cards and coins. And as I started traveling, it was the frequent flyer miles and hotel points. As I’ve gotten to know the ins and outs of the various programs, Flyertalk has become more important to me.

My points hobby, however, goes beyond the miles. In fact, non-travel programs are ubiquitous. My site runs the gamut from My Coke Rewards to Pampers to Panera. Heck, I’ve even got Petco going and I don’t have a pet. These points are not as sexy as miles, but I can’t remember the last time I paid for movie tickets or a Starbucks reload. And I discovered early on that I never actually had to buy these products to get points for the programs. These companies are happy to throw free points out on the web every so often in the hopes of sucking you in. I simply collect the freebies and cash out.

I built Freepointsite.com as much for myself as everyone else. There are a ton of great blogs that track mileage deals, but what about those of us who do, well, every other kind of loyalty program that we can get our hands on. The blog helps me categorize and track where I’m earning points.

There are days when I find a ton of points and days when I find none. Usually, I get one or two per day. The beginning of the month is always nice, since most companies release some codes. The plus side is that there is virtually zero work involved. No credit cards to apply for, no online shopping. Generally, there’s nothing more involved than clicking on a link or copying and pasting a code. It’s pretty much the lazy man’s way to collect free stuff.

One thing that I’ve discovered is that you don’t have to have a vested interest in the product to join a program. The prizes from the program often have little or nothing to do with the brand itself. Don’t have a baby? Big deal. Save the Pampers points (which consists of copying and pasting a code into a box and hitting enter) and buy magazines, the gift cards when they come along or, if you’re really ambitious, a BBQ tool set. Need a baby gift? Perfect. Want a restaurant gift card? Recyclebank is an easy way to get there. Some programs, like My Points or Disney Movie Rewards are well-known, but who knew that Stouffers and PF Chang’s had rewards programs. There’s even a site called Listia, which gives you points that you can use to bid for others’ rewards points that they’re not using.

I’ve got a few tricks of the trade, but frankly, there is so little involved that complicated tricks generally aren’t necessary. I use an alternative email to keep spam away, although these companies don’t send a lot of email, anyway. I have a Facebook account with no personal information, just a place to go for Freebies. And I don’t worry about how often the free points come out. Some programs, like Disney, are great at handing out free points. Others are a bit more stingy (Huggies, I’m looking at you.). But free is free, and eventually, you get there.

My current project is working on a list of birthday freebies, particularly from restaurants. From what I’ve seen, you could eat free for a month, but I’ve never put together a good list.

The bottom line is that these deals are as easy as they come. There is so little work involved that every prize truly is a freebie. I try to provide links directly to the sites, as well as the codes, so that you never need to do more than a few clicks. For those just starting out, some of these sites have evergreen codes that you can use once to build up your numbers. I hope you’ll stop by and check out my site.